


when my heart came back to me

by hitlikehammers



Series: Tonight, We Love (For Tomorrow The Heart May Break) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'Til the end of the line, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Returns (Again), Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Mid-Credits Scene, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Captain America: Civil War Fix-It, Credits Scene Fix-It, Extended Scene, Feelings, Fix-It, M/M, Requited Love, Resolved Sexual Tension, Steve Rogers Feels, Supersoldiers in Love, True Love, When Boys Finally Use Their Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 02:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6834721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I wanted to wait, so that you’d know for sure it was me,” Bucky says slowly, like he’s trying to pick through the best way to say something difficult, something rusted for how long it’s sat waiting; maybe wanting.</i>
</p><p>  <i>“But Stevie,” he breathes; “I <span class="u">can’t</span>.”</i></p><p>  <i>And if that look, that tone, the sweetness of even the heartbreak between them is <span class="u">real</span>, is what Steve has dreamed about but never dared to pray for as a believer, never thought to ask for in the after—but oh, god.</i></p><p>  <i><span class="u">If</span>. </i></p><p> <br/>Or: Steve is there when Bucky comes out of stasis. They’ve got one night before the procedure. There are things between them that can no longer remain unsaid.<br/> </p><p> </p><p>  <b>SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	when my heart came back to me

**Author's Note:**

> This thing kinda just happened. And as I’ve said: I’ve long since stopped fighting that sort of shit. Whoops.

Steve’s pulse hasn’t rattled so hard against his ribs since, since—

 _Jesus_.

Steve’s pulse hasn’t pounded _this_ hard before, _ever_. Not once in all this time.

The frost melts so slowly, compared to how it sucked in so fast when they, when it, when—

“He should come to fairly smoothly,” T’Challa speaks at Steve’s side, low—soft as the attendants ease Bucky’s still-unconscious body from the pod and lay him on the bed before dispersing silently: T’Challa speaks to him, but Steve barely hears it. 

“Should I leave you?”

Steve swallows, and just keeps staring at Bucky’s gradually-pinkening cheeks.

“Would you?” Steve croaks out, and a hand lands on his shoulder. Steve doesn’t turn; doesn’t flinch.

Doesn’t once look away from that face.

“Of course.” T’Challa steps away, and Steve calls to him before he leaves.

“Thank you,” he rasps, too full of feeling, too overcome by the nameless terror and wanting and aching and hope that consume his very bones. “I...”

“There is no need,” T’Challa says simply, a sadness touched with the barest of smiles living in his voice. “We are glad to do what we can.” He pauses; Steve watches the last hint of blue fade from Bucky’s lips. 

“For both of you.”

And T’Challa leaves, Steve suspects. The door closes, he registers peripherally.

Bucky’s chest rises quicker, deeper, and Steve thinks the world might break, not just him alone—the whole _world_ might break for what his heart starts doing, for how he shakes and comes undone when Bucky’s breath stutters, when his mouth parts, when he moans without being fully awake, the first word on that tongue:

“ _Steve_.”

“Buck?” And Steve surges forth quicker than any feint in battle, any trick of light or need; Steve is kneeling beside that bed and cupping Bucky’s hand and barely fucking _breathing_ when he asks, gasps:

“Bucky, are you, can you hear me?”

“Steve,” Bucky says again, louder, more sense in it as his eyes flicker open, soak in the world and steal away what breath Steve’s got left, but too soon they go wide, turn scared as he turns, as he starts breathing heavier, quicker, panicked: “Steve, I—”

“Shh,” Steve reaches, protective across Bucky’s chest as he cups his empty shoulder on the left, keeps his eyes on Bucky and Bucky alone and forces his own heartbeat not to quicken his breath by default as he keeps that breath steady, in order to keep _them_ steady.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Steve says it over and over again, slow and calm, until Bucky’s breathing evens, until his pupils shrink to size again. 

“You’re okay,” Steve tells him, but he knows himself well enough by now that he’s saying, at the very same time: _you’re okay, and that means I’m okay_. 

“It’s time.”

Bucky’s brow furrows.

“Has it been—”

“Not long,” is what Steve’s says out loud, when his mind screams _too long, too fucking long, I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t—_

“Just a month or so,” Steve nods, and forces a smile.

“Fuck,” Bucky sighs out slow, heavy, stares at the ceiling for a moment to let it sink in.

And then his eyes are on Steve, and Steve remembers anew where his world starts and ends.

“Why are you here?” It’s an innocent question, but it’s all knives and fists to spill Steve’s blood as it pumps.

“How could I _not_ be?”

“Steve,” Bucky’s eyes take on that glaze of horror, of fear again, and Steve can hardly fucking _stand_ it. “I could still—”

“Bullshit,” Steve snaps, shakes his head. “You aren’t a danger to me.” And where every other time he’s had the chance, Steve’s held back, hovered in mid-air: where the last time Steve found Bucky vulnerable and splayed prone beside him, heart new to beating _right_ again, Steve hadn’t touched, but this time he cups a palm against that face and doesn’t think twice for it. 

“You’ve never been a danger to _me_.”

But he doesn’t let the touch linger, either; doesn’t risk what might accidentally bleed through the contact of his fingertips with that precious skin.

“Fuckin’ punk,” Bucky smirks: small, but so very _him_ that Steve could sing for it, could sob for it. 

“This better work,” Bucky grouses; “Can’t trust _your_ stupid ass to take care of itself.”

“No,” Steve agrees, without a hint of mocking: “you can’t.”

And it’s amazing, in this moment, what the world feels like for the very first time: the fallout of everything that’s happened isn’t gone, isn’t settled—but they’re safe, here. There’s no war looming over them. There’s no threat, no loss like a guillotine at their necks. 

Steve is breathing in the same air as the man he loves, and for as far as he can see just now, there’s no threat of that stopping.

It’s amazing, what the world can _be_ , when these things are true.

“What’s that look?”

Bucky’s eying him, he realizes: analyzing. Looking deeper. Seeing more than he should.

“What look?” Steve tries to dodge—and maybe it wasn’t feeling bleeding through his fingertips that he needed to be worried about; fuck.

 _Fuck_.

“This here look,” Bucky leans in, compensating easily for the unbalance of his frame as he brushes the pad of his thumb over Steve’s cheekbone, the bow of his lip, the hollow of his eye.

Steve doesn’t dare to breathe; doesn’t dare to move at all.

He doesn’t want to even ponder what precisely is showing on his face, just then, just now. He knows all too well what the look is. He can’t hide his own heart; he used to try.

He’s too far past _trying_ , anymore. Too far past being able to hold it in.

“Because I wanna think I know what that look is,” Bucky murmurs, thumb still featherlight on Steve’s skin, setting every inch of Steve’s skin ablaze. “I want...”

“Bucky—” Steve starts, desperate: unable to stop his own heart from showing but unwilling to lose Bucky for his own weakness, for his own selfish needs.

“I wanted to wait.”

Steve comes up short. Bucky, as Bucky always has, takes the reins and steers them on. 

Together.

“I wanted to wait, so that you’d know for sure it was me,” Bucky says slowly, like he’s trying to pick through the best way to say something difficult, something rusted for how long it’s sat waiting; maybe wanting. “Me, and not just part or half, or twisted, or anything other than what I’ve been living off of for the better part of the life I’ve had for the living.”

He meets Steve’s eyes, and oh.

Oh, Steve thinks. _That’s_ the look Bucky’d asked after. It makes Steve wants to reach out, just like Bucky did, and to touch.

“I wanted every shred of doubt wiped clean, before I said it, before I did anything, I,” Bucky shakes his head, rueful and regretful and just a little lost with the world, and Steve understands that feeling, burgeoning and pressing hard under his collarbone, his sternum: he gets that.

“I wanted to wait.”

Steve can feel his own trembling starting to shiver through to the blood in his veins, starting to make it move sideways, almost, rather than straight through. Threatening to tear him to shreds.

“I can’t, though,” Bucky meets his eyes again; clear. Resigned. And yet: almost _lighter_. 

“I can’t let one more fucking miracle of having you in front of me again, all warm skin and beating heart, breathing clear and deep, and,” Bucky huffs out heartbreak in a laugh that gets stuck in Steve’s throat, but it tastes sweet, beyond all reason, and so Steve keeps it there, breathes in halves around it as Bucky whispers: 

“I _can’t_.”

And oh, if that look, if that tone, if the sweetness of even the heartbreak between them is real, is what Steve has dreamed about but never dared to pray for as a believer, never thought to ask for in the after, but oh, god: _if_. 

“I went into that thing with two thoughts,” Bucky nods at the contraption that kept him in stasis, kept him from Steve and was therefore an enemy, no matter how willing Bucky had been to go in. 

“One: this is the only option. Like saying it again would make it okay,” Bucky snorts, derisive; “and two…”

He breathes deep, and closes his eyes, and rubs his own chest around his breaths like he used to rub Steve’s: insurance, he’d say, that tomorrow would come and the world would will be standing. 

“Two,” he whispers, soft to himself, curling his lips as his eyes flutter closed. “James Barnes, you’re a fuckin’ fool to test this world again, to leave something like this unsaid.”

His eyes snap open, and don't have to search for Steve. They know where he is, before the lids flicker up. 

“I won’t do it again, Steve,” Bucky says to him, speaks _into_ him with the force of conviction Steve recalls from dire moments, brushes with death or worse: _you don't get to die, Steve, you might have the priest’s blessing but you ain't got mine, punk, you hear me? You ain't got mine_ , or _That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight_. It shivers, trickles through Steve’s blood like it means to kill him, or save his goddamn soul. 

“I,” Bucky swallows dry with a click of his tongue. “If whatever they do doesn’t fix me, or hell, breaks me more, if it leaves me fucked in the head to the point I don’t even know my own name, I…”

He blinks, and his eyes are full of water when he looks back up, but Steve's eyes are just as ready to well and spill for the force of his stupid, _stupid_ hoping heart. 

“I can’t not have _told_ you,” Bucky exhales, breakable, far away when Steve needs him close, when Steve's had enough of him being beyond his reach, beyond his touch. 

“Bucky, I—”

“I love you.”

And in that single moment, Steve understands what it means to die inside the suspended fragments of your own disbelieving soul. 

“I am in love with you, with every single piece of me,” Bucky breathes, and oh, Steve was afraid of death for its losing, for so long, but this is beautiful. 

This is everything.

“Every heartbeat, every blink, every breath is a thing that happens for me, because of how much I love _you_.”

Steve gasps, shaky, and it's so thick in his lungs that maybe, just maybe, it could be real. 

“Bucky,” Steve hardly breathes, but then Bucky's reaching, holding onto Steve's hand and bearing into Steve soul with those eyes, those _eyes_ —

“And I want to believe that the look you were giving me,” he squints. Smiles a little bashful, a little foolish, a little bit of everything Steve’s own heart sings for. 

“That look you're _still_ giving me, maybe it’s not a new one, and even if it is, maybe—”

“It’s not new,” Steve breaks in, breaks apart. Heart sore and _alive_ with it. “It’s,” Steve’s breathless. Steve’s floating, Steve—

“I love you so much,” and saying it, letting go of that weight is a blessing Steve never imagined: it's not heavy anymore, no—it's perfect. It's wonder and brightness and a story without an end but with every page written in heart-pumping gratitude and feeling. “Buck, I…”

Steve falls inward, and cradles Bucky’s face in his hands, like his hands were never meant to fit anything else, to do anything else, and Steve's never thought of his body as anything but a burden, and then a tool, but here: _here_. 

“ _Buck_.”

He was made for this. He was made for Bucky. He was made to fit this post, this devoted cause forevermore: this and only this. 

Bucky leans first, but Steve moves, tilts to meet his lips without a thought, because this meeting is a thing his limbs have always known, that he learned long ago in helpless dreams and remembered, because they'd never stopped being the brightest parts of his world: real or otherwise. 

And Bucky, for being cold just moments before, is searing; Bucky, for being still just seconds before is made of frantic, frenetic motion as he surges against Steve’s open mouth, his tongue licking desperate from the very back of Steve’s throat to up behind his teeth, consuming him like a starving man and yes, yes, but Steve relates, has been wanting, needing—

“Stevie,” Bucky moans into Steve's mouth so deep that it slips down to shake his heart where it pounds; and Bucky, too, where Steve's hands are on his chest, where Steve touches wherever he can, where _his_ heart had been deathly slow, unpalapable just minutes earlier—it's racing with a force that could change tides and shift the landscape of the world for just its being, for just the simple fact that it moves. 

And where Bucky's hands can't roam and clutch at once, where Bucky's shortchanged for touch at his arm, he more than makes up for it by wrapping thick thighs around Steve's waist and pulling him closer, closer, closer with the force of his legs until they're chest to chest, panting; hip to hip, straining, throbbing, _wanting_ —

“Do you,” Bucky gasps, rolling his weight into the hard line Steve's cock; “can we—”

“Room,” Steve offers, dazed, already leaking damp through his jeans; “Yeah.”

And Bucky moves his hand to the center of Steve's back and draws him in to feel Bucky's heartbeat against his own ribs, an assault and a gift and the world at his fingertips, the hand of god braced on his skin and all he knows is need; all he’s made of is want, and Bucky kisses him deeper than Steve ever knew he ran, than Steve ever dreamt he could contain. 

“I’ve got a room.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).
> 
> Also, now with a [porny sequel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6895984), if you'd like one ;)


End file.
